WELCOME
Good morning First Baptist. We welcome you to worship this morning. Be sure to remember your brothers and sisters in Christ throughout the week as you pray for them, and as the Holy Spirit brings their faces to your mind. Be sure to also connect with them in the ways that are possible. And if you have any questions or would like to talk to someone, please don’t hesitate to contact the church through the church telephone and leave a message. (519-733-4144)
Songs
Call to Worship
In the beauty of this place, we have come to pray, to worship, to receive healing and hope.
We come from the struggles and triumphs of the week, needing to feel the soothing presence of God.
Lord, be with us this day. Calm and soothe our souls. Cause us to rejoice that you have provided a special place where we may gather to talk of your presence and love; to sing your praises; and to be empowered to go forth to serve you. AMEN.
Songs
Prayer
Prayer of Confession & Assurance
Confession:
Patient Lord, we are a culture that wants the quick and easy answers to all of life’s problems. We want to be able to open the Bible and place our fingers on the passage that will answer all our questions and heal all our hurts. It is difficult for us to deal with the knowledge that discipleship requires patience and perseverance. Jesus’ own disciples struggled with his teachings. It took a long time for them to understand fully what Jesus was saying and how they were to respond. We are no different. The words of Jesus take time for us to comprehend. Forgive us, Lord, when we are so impatient; when we just want to “get on with it”, and be where the action is. Help us to understand the commitment we make in discipleship, through the rocky times and the smooth seas alike. Push us in our ministry of help and compassion to do more than we ever thought we could do in helping others. Give to us that extra measure of faith and commitment that we may truly serve you by serving others. In Jesus’ Name, we pray. AMEN.
Assurance of Forgiveness:
Even though you doubt and question, God’s love is poured on you, in you, and through you to others. Rest assured in God’s presence and love for you, that will never fail or abandon you. In the name of Jesus Christ, you are healed, restored, and forgiven. AMEN!
Summer in the Psalms
Generosity - The Stewardship of Rest
Today's Message: Pastors Marlee Page and Dave Page
Everyone has someone or something at the very center of their lives. No one is without a consuming passion of some kind at the core of his being. For some people, their lives revolve around good and constructive things, like their children, career, parents, or even ministry. For other people, their lives center on shallower things, such as a favourite sports team, their yard, or a hobby – not bad necessarily. And yet for others, their lives rotate around what can be one of the shallowest of all things – themselves.
For the Jesus follower, everything in his or her life revolves around one driving passion and one dominant pursuit – God himself. We talked about that last week in the form of worship and Sabbath. God must be at the center of every life or it will be off track. Each of the Psalms we have looked at this summer has touched on this truth in one way or another. Everything and everyone else must be secondary; God must be first. This is the heart of a God-centered life.
This is the focal message of the Psalm that we will use as the basis of this message today – Psalm 112. It is a Psalm about what it looks like for a believer to live a God-centered life, one in which God is the sum and substance of life. This is a wisdom Psalm designed to reveal the path of the godly.
Scripture Reading: Psalm 112
1 Praise the Lord.
Blessed are those who fear the Lord,
who find great delight in his commands.2 Their children will be mighty in the land;
the generation of the upright will be blessed.
3 Wealth and riches are in their houses,
and their righteousness endures forever.
4 Even in darkness light dawns for the upright,
for those who are gracious and compassionate and righteous.
5 Good will come to those who are generous and lend freely,
who conduct their affairs with justice.6 Surely the righteous will never be shaken;
they will be remembered forever.
7 They will have no fear of bad news;
their hearts are steadfast, trusting in the Lord.
8 Their hearts are secure, they will have no fear;
in the end they will look in triumph on their foes.
9 They have freely scattered their gifts to the poor,
their righteousness endures forever;
their horn will be lifted high in honor.10 The wicked will see and be vexed,
they will gnash their teeth and waste away;
the longings of the wicked will come to nothing.
Please notice that this Psalm begins with a celebration, an announcement of praise to God. Recall that we’ve said ‘blessed’ means happy, satisfied, content, whole, full. It is also in the plural here, which intensifies its use. The heart of the psalmist is again full of praise for God because of the immense blessing that comes to the heart of the person who fears the Lord. To fear the Lord means to show reverence or to revere him. It means to give him first place in our lives and to take him very seriously. It means to stand in awe of who he is, holy beyond description and absolutely sovereign. The person who fears the Lord will delight in his commands. You cannot fear God without delighting in his Word. The two are bound together, not ever to be separated.
The generation of the upright then refers to those who live around the God-fearing person, their peers, work associates, neighbors, and the like. The powerful influence of a God-fearing person is felt by everyone around them. It is what makes these people ‘upright’ as well. People are always watching you and whether you think so or not, you rub off on them!
Psalm 112:4
This light is the spiritual light of enlightenment and illumination that comes to the eyes and the heart of the God-fearing person. They are very often able to see in the darkness because light is given to them. They can see what others cannot see. They see with spiritual eyes. They see with a divine perspective and discernment. Full of grace. Their words as well as actions are gracious – meaning kind, patient, tender, and uplifting.
They are compassionate, feeling deeply for others in need, full of both empathy and sympathy. This term ‘upright’ to us, means righteous or conformed to a standard – becoming like Jesus. He is the standard, who is gracious and compassionate (Ps. 111:4).
Psalm 112:5–6
These are also very generous people with their belongings, their treasure. They hold what they have with an open hand and lend freely what they have to others.
I want to expand on this idea of generosity for a moment. There is more than the righteousness of the self at stake here. God-fearing people know this. In fact, they know that the survival of the world, from an eternal perspective, is also at stake. Though this is nothing new, the world around us today sees this type of lifestyle, one of care, compassion, and generosity for others, as weakness, a waste of time.
Eugene Peterson calls this ‘Heart-atheism.’ “Heart-atheism becomes social oppression. If the self makes its own rules and satisfies its own compulsions, the social result is that the people around me become food – material that I can use to fulfill my needs. I no longer look on them as persons but as stuff that I can use to make life satisfactory.”
This is NOT generosity of spirit.
One of the great lies of our time is that whatever it is that we choose to believe is nobody’s business but our own. Whatever I chose to believe, how I chose to live, whatever it is that I do in the privacy of my own heart is of no concern to the world around me. You see, what upright and generous people know, is that what they believe and how they chose to live is the business of others because it impacts them! If I allow people around me to be nothing more than pawns in my chess board of life then my beliefs are shaping the way I act in the world around me and that too becomes a witness to my lifestyle. If I make ‘me’ sovereign in place of God, and therefore love a lifestyle in accordance with my appetites and my wants and my desires, I become a burden in society.
Have you ever considered that your lifestyle and how it impacts others may be one of the most generous offerings you can give to the people around you? If I relentlessly look for ways in which I can get what is there for my own uses with no care or consideration for what anyone else gets. If I as Peterson says I ‘am an atheist in my heart,’ then it is not long before I have become a cancer in the gut of the country.’
In the Hebrew language, the words poor (‘aniyyim) and humble (‘anawim) are very similar. ‘Poor’ is used as we would most likely think of it, meaning materially or economically poor. Anawim however, humble, is different. Think of a spiritual or a moral posture of a person. What these words have in common, however, is the thing that is unique. Both poor and humble share the absence of possession. No matter if it’s because of circumstance or by choice, these people are not necessarily in control, and that makes them quite often open and able to receive and then respond to God’s blessing for them.
Remember back when we started our discussion around the Sermon on the Mount? Jesus started with these words that are captured in two versions: “blessed are the poor in spirit” (‘anawim – Matthew 5:3), and “blessed are you poor” (‘aniyyim – Luke. 6:20). Each is a tip of the cap to the other. The Gospel writers understood what Jesus was getting at here. Being spiritually poor is a soul issue, being physically poor is a body issues.
Notice the psalmist says in verse 6. They will never be shaken. God-fearing and spiritually generous people have an anchor for their soul. They are marked, and seen, by the people around them by their stability and strength of heart.
This Psalm leads us to the question we have for you this morning:
What is the center of my life?
- Do I delight in God’s Word?
- Do I sleep well at night?
- Do I give all of my cares to him?
- Do the people around me see that in my every day, normal aspect of life that I strive to live a god-centered life with His holiness, and that sovereignty, righteousness, compassion, and generosity are the things I’m trying to emulate?
You will notice that we referenced two specific Psalms for this morning and we’ve not yet touched the second one – Psalm 37.
Psalm 37
Of David.
1 Do not fret because of those who are evil
or be envious of those who do wrong;2 for like the grass they will soon wither,
like green plants they will soon die away.3 Trust in the Lord and do good;
dwell in the land and enjoy safe pasture.4 Take delight in the Lord,
and he will give you the desires of your heart.5 Commit your way to the Lord;
trust in him and he will do this:6 He will make your righteous reward shine like the dawn,
your vindication like the noonday sun.7 Be still before the Lord
and wait patiently for him;
do not fret when people succeed in their ways,
when they carry out their wicked schemes.8 Refrain from anger and turn from wrath;
do not fret – it leads only to evil.9 For those who are evil will be destroyed,
but those who hope in the Lord will inherit the land.
Notice that before the Psalmist could write, “7 Be still before the Lord and wait patiently for him” there was some specific work to do in the verse before. You see, one of the themes we have wanted to equip you with this summer, something that you can take with you into the business of the fall ahead is that none of us can truly experience God’s rest until we have self-assurance of the orientation of our faith and posture of our love. Is it pointed inward towards ourselves or is it pointed outward to our God and spilling over on those around us? That’s generosity. You cannot experience God’s rest until you make that decision.
Look at verses 3-4: “Trust in the LORD, and do good; dwell in the land and befriend faithfulness. Delight yourself in the LORD, and He will give you the desires of your heart.” To experience God’s rest, we must first trust and delight in Him. It is when you do that, as the Psalms have pointed out to us over and over again, that our souls become more restful because we are able to abide in His presence. There’s that word again, abide.
I’ll finish with this last encouragement/application.
When you chose to live a God-fearing, God- centered life like this, you will find that your desires are met because our they align with what God wants for you. Our culture’s idea of getting ahead and success pales in comparison to what God has planned for us.
In Psalm 37:7, after writing, “Be still before the LORD and wait patiently for Him,” the Psalmist continues, “Fret not yourself over the one who prospers in his way.” That’s really good advice. God calls our focus away from the apparent success of people in our surroundings and toward Him. Trust Him Church! Delight in Him. Don’t be weighed down anymore, instead, take great peace in knowing that:
39 The salvation of the righteous comes from the Lord;
he is their stronghold in time of trouble.40 The Lord helps them and delivers them;
he delivers them from the wicked and saves them,
because they take refuge in him.
Take refuge in him and be at rest.
Prayer
Where has the time gone, Lord? It seems as though we just got started with summer, having plans for rest and recreation, leisure and celebration. Then suddenly, we are at the end of the summer. We know, as we begin to focus more closely on our daily planners, that time fills up fast with duties, meetings, organizations, and just generally getting back into the swing of things. It is easy for us to get lost in the obligations and to neglect our commitment to you. You have girded us for the journey, giving us armaments of faith. Your beloved Son, our Savior Jesus Christ, has poured out blessings upon blessings in his teachings that we might be made whole and be in good and faithful service to you by serving your world. Open our hearts and spirits, Lord, to faithful ministries in which we may take part. Let us take the extra steps into the wondrous mission to which you have called. Heal, restore, and prepare us for service. For we ask this in Jesus’ Name. AMEN.
Song
Benediction
God is always with you. Even when times get difficult and the way is not clear, God is truly by your side. Rest in God’s strength and love. Serve God with joy. Go in peace. AMEN.